cloth was spread--What we ate and drank--A Gargantuan feeder--Songs
and dances of passion--The royal feast at Tetuanui's--I leave for
Vairao--Butscher and the Lermantoffs

Chapter XXI

A heathen temple--The great Marae of Oberea--I visit it with Rupert
Brooke and Chief Tetuanui--The Tahitian religion of old--The wisdom
of folly

Chapter XXII

I start for Tautira--A dangerous adventure in a canoe--I go by land
to Tautira--I meet Choti and the Greek god--I take up my home where
Stevenson lived

Chapter XXIII

My life at Tautira--The way I cook my food--Ancient Tahitian
sports--Swimming and fishing--A night hunt for shrimp and eels

Chapter XXIV

In the days of Captain Cook--The first Spanish
missionaries--Difficulties of converting the heathens--Wars over
Christianity--Ori-a-Ori, the chief, friend of Stevenson--We read the
Bible together--The church and the himene

Chapter XXV

I meet a sorcerer--Power over fire--The mystery of the fiery
furnace--The scene in the forest--Walking over the white-hot
stones--Origin of the rite

Chapter XXVI

Farewell to Tautira--My good-bye feast--Back at the Tiare--A talk
with Lovaina--The Cercle Bougainville--Death of David--My visit to
the cemetery--Off for the Marquesas

MYSTIC ISLES OF THE SOUTH SEAS

Chapter I

Departure from San Francisco--Nature man left behind--Fellow-passengers
on the Noa-Noa--Tragedy of the Chinese pundit--Strange stories of
the South Seas--The Tahitian Hula.

The warning gong had sent all but crew and passengers ashore, though
our ship did not leave the dock. Her great bulk still lay along the
piling, though the gangway was withdrawn. The small groups on the
pier waited tensely for the last words with those departing. These
passengers were inwardly bored with the prolonged farewells, and
wanted to be free to observe their fellow-voyagers and the movement
of the ship. They conversed in shouts with those ashore, but most of
the meanings were lost in the noise of the shuffling of baggage and
freight, the whistling of ferries, and the usual turmoil of the San
Francisco waterfront. I was glad that none had come to see me off,
for I was curious about my unknown companions upon the long traverse
to the South Seas, and I had wilfully put behind me all that America
and Europe held to adventure in the vasts of ocean below the equator.

But the whistle I awaited to sound our leaving was silent. Officers
of the ship rushed about as if bent o